Welcome to another “This week in Magic.” This week we had a little bit of fun as I got to playtest the Mono Green deck list that Top 8’d SCG Portland a few weeks back. The deck is a lot of fun to play and break on the thinking part of the game. The idea of the deck is just to get cheap and powerful creatures onto the board and take down your opponent and his team as fast as you can. Thanks to the mono colored symbols, this deck has no real mana problems except for one that I’ll talk about later. Our configuration was 20 lans, 32 creatures and only eight spells. Barring any weird statistical anomalies, we should see some action every turn.

Okay, enough of my rambling. Here is the deck list I ran.

Main Board:
10 Forest
2 Plains
4 Windswept Heath
4 Temple of Plenty

4 Surrak, the Hunt Caller
4 Boon Satyr
4 Deathmist Raptor
4 Den Protector
4 Elvish Mystic
4 Avatar of the Resolute
4 Reverent Hunter
4 Fleecemane Lion

4 Aspect of Hydra
4 Collected Company

Side Board
4 Ranger’s Guile
4 Miscutter Hydra
2 Feed the Clan
3 Hornet’s Nest
2 Mastery of the Unseen

As you can tell, my list is a little different from what the Top 8 list ran. I am running a more consistant 4-of list. I wanted to get right to the point. Of course, running Green, I had to include the Raptor/Protector combo. Fortunately for us, it also works well with our Collected Company spell.

The Good

So what did I like best about this deck. For the most part, the deck is straightforward. Hope for your turn one Mystic Elf and start playing your creatures. These were my best games. Anytime I had him on turn one, we were off to the races. Boon Satyrs would soon be hitting the board and shortly were accompanied by a band of other 3cc heroes. Out of all the creatures in the deck, our MVP had to have been Surrak. I’ve had some mixed emotions about this guy for some reason. In the end, I came to my better instincts and realized how good he is. Considering our creature package, there is a small chance that he will come into play and not give himself haste due to this Formidable ability. If you’re able to follow up with a Reverent Hunter, then your opponent is in for a world full of hate.

The Bad

I was able to playtest this and run it through a small Wednesday night Standard Tournament where I did not ganar amazing results. For most of the night I ran into the statistical anomalies. I had to mulligan quite a few games due to lack of mana. I ran into many hands with one land. One the play, I’m very reluctant to keep obviously, but on the draw, I’m more inclined to keep. However, that was rarely the case.

So I’m starting to think these are not “anomalies.” Maybe I’m just not running enough land. Maybe it’s time we bumped it up to 22 lands one person suggested.

I also felt that the deck needed another 1cc mana dork. Sadly, none exist in Standard right now. However, there are quite a few 2cc mana producers. The question now is would it be worth it. I think so. Maybe not a full set, but two may do the trick. I felt like if you didn’t have a little bit of help, then you had a slow and clunky start. Now, this may also have to do with our rough mana starts, but I think this will boost our production rate quite a bit in the long run.

Against UB/Esper Control

You would think a “fast” and aggressive deck would be the solution to any control deck. However, this is a testament of how good the control decks are right now. This seemed like such a terrible matchup for me. I few counters here, a Foul-Tongue Invocation there, and the next thing I knew I saw so far behind I was grumbling at myself.

These were the matches where I felt if I didn’t have a mana dork out on turn one, I was almost guaranteed to lose the match. So, if you don’t have a Mystic Elf in hand turn one against Control, you should Mulligan until you do.

Against Abazan Aggro

This is almost a coin-flip. However, we have plenty of ours that can assure us a win. The keys to winning here are Aspect of the Hydra, Den Protector, and/or Avatar of the Resolute. The thing with Abzan Aggro is that they can put creatures down as fast as we can, but they have the added advantage of being able to remove our creatures if needed. Den Protector is a big player because of it’s ability to punch through their wall. A timely Aspect can pump our Den Protector big enough to get through their fences and land some damage.

However, if this is our game plan, we need to be very conscious of their ability to remove our creatures if needed. So keep an eye open on their available mana resources.

Well that’s it for this week. Play around with the list. This is a deck that I think will continue to pop up every now and then at FNMs and even major tournaments. It’s still an affordable deck to put together, but if you can’t get your hands on Deathmist Raptors it’s not the end of the world. There are plenty of other Green creatures you can run in it’s place. A card I’d like to see some people play with that I didn’t mention was Dramoka’s Command. If we’re splashin White for Fleecemane, then why not also make room for one of the best commands in the format right now. Good luck!

About the author

Simeon is now the Community Manager for Battleground Games & Hobbies. If you have any questions or inquiries, then you can reach him at Sims@battlegroundgames.com. He is also an avid gamer who loves to play board games and video games. He graduated college with a degree in Political Science, and now serves the public by writing about games. You can check that out here. Don’t forget to “like” him on Facebook as well. It’ll update you on all of his newest content. Best of all, you can follow Simeon on Twitter (@SimeonCortezano) for some real time hilarity. Thanks for reading!

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